Range appliances generally include a cooktop portion and an oven portion. The cooktop portion of certain range appliances includes a griddle burner for heating large cookware, such as griddles and fish poachers. Griddle burners provide flame ports along a length of the griddle burner in order to heat large cookware on the cooktop portion.
A drawback of griddle burners is that griddle burners consume space on the cooktop portion that could be used for a more common round gas burner. To address this drawback, some griddle burners have partitioned sections, such as the burner in U.S. Pat. No. 7,527,495, that allow one section to be used for heating smaller cookware. However, partitioned griddle burners are difficult to control and are frequently too hot to properly heat a griddle. Another solution is to provide a round burner at a center of the griddle burner, such as in the burner of U.S. Patent Application No. 2011/0186037. The round burner allows better heating of round cookware. However, evenly heating a griddle with the round burner and griddle burner employed simultaneously can be difficult. In addition, cleaning the round burner and the griddle burner can be difficult, and providing sufficient secondary air to the round burner through griddle burner can also be difficult.
Accordingly, a burner assembly with features for assisting with heating a griddle and cookware smaller than a griddle would be useful. In particular, a burner assembly with features for assisting with uniformly heating a griddle and uniformly heating cookware smaller than a griddle that is also easy to clean and provides sufficient secondary air would be useful.